There Is No Healthcare Crisis in the United States

We've heard it before and we'll hear it again (especially come January when the Democrats -- and from one of my previous posts you know what I think about them -- come back in control of the Congress) --- "We have to fix the healthcare crisis in this country!"

Every time I hear something like this, especially from a politician or a lawyer and particularly from anyone even remotely similar to a journalist, it makes me want to rant and rave. Just what I created this blog for.

Why?

Because there is no crisis in the healthcare industry. Never has been. And there won't be one unless the communist left tries to "fix" healthcare.

I can hear the cries of dissent already. "What about all the people who don't have health insurance? What about the people who can't buy their medications? What about the........"

My ranting is caused not because I think that people who can't get healthcare aren't a problem. The issue here is not an issue. It's semantics.

"Words mean things." (Rush Limbaugh) Yes, words do mean things. If we are to state or believe that there is a healthcare crisis, then we must be stating or believing that there is a crisis in the system that actually is providing care to people; there must be problems with the doctors, nurses, hospitals, medicines, ambulances, stretchers, hospital laundries, et cetera, that make up the healthcare system. I maintain that there is no such problem with these entities. I'll go on to say that the United States has the greatest healthcare system in the world. After all, when the world's rich and powerful get sick, do they go to China for their healthcare? To Russia? To Senegal? Even to Britain or Canada? No. They come to the United States. They know our system is superior.

If you pay attention (and it doesn't have to even be close attention) to the crisis mongers, you'll soon note that their complaints seem to have a common refrain. People don't have insurance to pay for.... people can't afford their.... this (fill-in-the-blank with a medical word) is too expensive.....

The common refrain is money.

I will not deny that there are significant numbers of US citizens who cannot afford or have great difficulty affording healthcare. I do not deny that healthcare in this country is expensive. What I do deny is that this is a crisis -- or that it has anything to do with healthcare. The actual provision of healthcare is provided in a monetary vacuum. Does anyone really think that when someone arrives in an emergency department bleeding profusely in a life-threatening way that there is a single caregiver in that place that says or even thinks, 'Now, hold on a minute -- before we start treating this guy, we need to see how much treatment he can afford'?

Just because we have a problem with healthcare financing in this country does not mean we have a healthcare crisis. Words mean things -- and those two phrases -- healthcare financing problem and healthcare crisis -- mean two different things.

The first exists; the second does not.

Oregon Kills "Physician-Assisted Suicide"

So the Oregon Department of Human Services has decided to no longer use the term "physician-assisted suicide" to describe the process of allowing physicians to assist patients in committing their own self-murder. This change occurred due to the pressure (and apparently threats of lawsuits) from suicide-advocacy groups. Polls had shown that people were more likely to approve legalizing the practice when the word "suicide" was not used to describe it. These proponents are now suggesting new terms (i.e. euphemisms) such as "physician-assisted death", "physician aid in dying" or "hastened death".

I have a suggestion: how about physician-coordinated execution?

Despite the fact that few medical schools use the actual Hippocratic oath, one of the phrases retained in almost all the modern alternatives is: To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death. Hippocrates had it right 2500 years ago. He understood the concept of the slippery slope and cherished the sanctity of human life.

And this is not "colored" by any modern religious theologies. Hippocrates believed in the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods that today are historic anachronisms. His opposition to this practice by today's terms could not be any more secular (or "human-rights' oriented", if you prefer).

Yes, Hippocrates had it right all those years ago. The state of Oregon continues to have it wrong. Most people understand how wrong such a practice is. And the proponents of this abominable practice tacitly demonstrate how wrong it is by having to rename it with a pleasant-sounding euphemism in order to get anyone else to accept it.